How tiresome – another Turner Prize, another controversy – and why?. “We just can’t get past it. For some reason it seems far more pressing to ask whether something can actually be called art than to ask whether it’s good or bad. This barrier is more important and more damaging to art itself than it may sound. A lot of people – teachers, curators, critics, funding bodies – have to agree something is art before it can get nominated for an award such as the Turner Prize. Unless all these people are conspiring to make fools of us, that’s a pretty convincing consensus.”